Slowly, with a little swish of her skirts, she moved towards Lord Lynche and placed her hands in his.

“It is not right that you should go through all this,” he asserted. “I would that I could bear it for you.”

She smiled at him a little unsteadily and, as she did so, she realised that the hunger of her lips was echoed by his.

There was an expression of yearning in his face that seemed to transform him from a bitter reserved man into an unhappy boy.

In that moment she longed as she had never longed before to put her arms around his neck and to pull down his head to her breast to comfort him.

For a moment she clung to his hand, feeling the strength of his fingers reassuring her. Then, as they had nothing more to say, they walked together in silence side by side down the staircase.

On the broad landing on the first floor most of the gentlemen of the party were congregated, standing outside what Carina guessed must be Sir Percy’s bedroom.

They were all talking excitedly together, but, as Carina and Lord Lynche appeared, there was a sudden silence.

Carina noticed that once again they avoided looking at her, turning their eyes away as if she was already a condemned woman.

Instinctively, because she was afraid not of them but of their unspoken condemnation, she drew a little closer to Lord Lynche.

“I told the groom to fetch a doctor, Justin,” Colonel Wakeford said, walking towards them, “and by a bit of luck the doctor was dining with your agent. It only took a few minutes to bring him here. He arrived a second or so ago and he is with Percy now. Would you like to go in to him?”

“I would rather you saw to it for me,” Lord Lynche answered.

“Of course,” Colonel Wakeford replied and turned and walked through the door that led to the bedroom.

“Suppose we go downstairs?” Lord Lynche suggested to the other gentlemen, who were now looking awkward and a little embarrassed. “I can imagine no more uncomfortable place to wait than on a draughty landing.”

He offered Carina his arm as he spoke. She put her fingers elegantly on it and her other hand on the banisters and they moved slowly downstairs.

Lord Lynche led Carina into the big drawing room, the room she had never seen before.

It was magnificent, and yet there was something cold and impersonal about it. And so instinctively she compared it with the room she had seen earlier in the day with its Adam ceiling, beautiful marble mantelpiece and long windows looking out onto the garden.

At one end of the drawing room there were the green baize tables that had brought disaster to Lord Lynche.